Modern packet-switched networks accommodate a greater number of users and larger amount of traffic than ever before. Many users have sought to harness the increased bandwidth and connectivity to other users to exchange large files, such as multimedia content and software. To this end, users often engage in so-called Peer-to-Peer (P2P) transfers, in which data is exchanged directly between users, rather than between the user and a central server. Such an approach is advantageous, as it allows sharing of massive amounts of information without the need for a central server with the requisite storage and bandwidth.
Unfortunately, P2P transfers can have a significant impact on the Quality of Experience of other users in the network. As an example, a typical BitTorrent transfer may establish hundreds or even thousands of connections to other peers in the network. Establishing this many connections uses up available bandwidth in transmission lines and burdens the network equipment used to route the packets to the appropriate destination. As the number of users of P2P software has increased, the negative effects on service provider networks have multiplied.
Service providers have been forced to address these problems caused by P2P transfers. Given the significant expenses associated with adding additional equipment, service providers are reluctant to address the P2P problem by simply increasing the capacity of the network. Furthermore, increasing capacity may not be a solution at all, as P2P transfers have the potential to overwhelm any amount of available bandwidth.
As a result, service providers have started to regulate transmission of P2P traffic over their networks. Service providers initially treated all P2P traffic as suspect and gave other transfers preferential treatment over P2P traffic. Such an approach has resulted in significant legal problems for service providers. For example, in the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has held that Internet service providers must not discriminate against all P2P traffic, as it violates users' rights to select applications and content of their choice. “Net-neutrality” advocates, those who support fair and equal access to the Internet, have mounted similar legal challenges.
Legal problems aside, treating all P2P traffic as suspect operates on a number of false assumptions. First, such an approach assumes that all P2P transfers are illegitimate, when, in actuality, many content owners use P2P as a cheap, efficient way of allowing users to obtain their content. As an example, many freeware or shareware software developers distribute their software using P2P transfers. Second, the initial approach taken by service providers assumes that P2P transfers have no technical benefits. In fact, P2P transfers allow a massive amount of information to be shared without the need for a large infrastructure of content servers.
Thus, in light of the foregoing, it would be desirable to implement a solution that allows service providers to regulate illegal or otherwise illegitimate P2P transfers, while allowing legitimate P2P transfers to continue as usual. Such a solution would likely be resource intensive and, as such, it would be beneficial to utilize a processing device having resources independent from that of a network node forwarding traffic.
Forwarding all traffic to such a processing device would also constitute a waste of resources, however, in the case of a processing device that only requires a subset of the traffic from each IP flow in order to identify the content. Accordingly, there exists a need for a network element that minimizes the amount of information transmitted to the processing device, while still providing the processing device with enough information to identify the transmitted P2P content.
The foregoing objects and advantages of the invention are illustrative of those that can be achieved by the various exemplary embodiments and are not intended to be exhaustive or limiting of the possible advantages which can be realized. Thus, these and other objects and advantages of the various exemplary embodiments will be apparent from the description herein or can be learned from practicing the various exemplary embodiments, both as embodied herein or as modified in view of any variation that may be apparent to those skilled in the art. Accordingly, the present invention resides in the novel methods, arrangements, combinations, and improvements herein shown and described in various exemplary embodiments.